


the mirror looks different with you beside me

by Groco



Category: Marvel 616, Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Tommy Is Allowed Feelings and Development, baby's first fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 20:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Groco/pseuds/Groco
Summary: When Tommy looked at his family pictures, from back when they still bothered to get them taken at Sears, the immediate thing that made him think he didn't look like his parents was his hair. It was stark white in the photos, standing against his mother’s blonde hair that was long past dishwater, and his father’s dull, graying brown.As if that would make it less obvious.OR, Tommy's relationship with his appearance, and people, and their appearance.





	the mirror looks different with you beside me

**Author's Note:**

> Baby's first fic. I rewrite canon on a whim. References to alcoholism and abuse are brief and vague (no graphic descriptions of violence or abuse)

When Tommy looked at his family pictures, from back when they still bothered to get them taken at Sears, the immediate thing that made him think he didn't look like his parents was his hair. It was stark white in the photos, standing against his mother’s blonde hair that was long past dishwater, and his father’s dull, graying brown.

As if that would make it less obvious.

As a baby they thought it was white-blonde.

It took merely time and observation to see that wasn't true.

It wasn’t blonde hair that was ridiculously light during childhood. It didn't grow darker. It wasn't platinum, it wasn't blonde- there were no traces of yellow. Just silvery gray.

When he was really young, his parents would make jokes to their family about him having albinism- a ridiculous claim to laugh at to distract from the fact they knew it wasn't true.

They didn't live in a world where unnatural hair colors weren't common- even, well, naturally. 

But wasn't that exactly the train of thought to avoid.

At one point, when the plausible deniability had long run dry, his mother suggested they dye his hair. It was around the same time she made him quit track, “_ If you can't act normal about it”. _

She wrung her hands together, talking about the colors she saw at Walmart-_ if you want, Tommy, it doesn't have to be brown; we could do blonde like I had when I was younger _\- she chuckled at that, trying to see humor in him having a choice over his Don't Let The Neighbors Talk About Us makeover.

Tommy thought about himself with brown hair- with dark hair. With hair so dark no one could ever imagine it any other color. He looked in the mirror and he had a funny feeling.

The dye job in the bathroom fucked up, his mother yelling at his father with those plastic gloves still on her hands, and Tommy's head still ducked into the sink.

* * *

Tommy once thought that if his hair was a little more normal, if _ he _ were a little more normal, it would be easier for people to do that thing where they dubiously tell parents how much their kids look like them. They wouldn't be taken aback for a few agonizing seconds before ignoring his hair to scrutinize his face- to settle for “Oh, Mary, his eyes look just like yours-”

His mother had green eyes. Sometimes Tommy thought it was true, that his looked like hers. That someday his eyes would sink into crows feet and lines, pale against pale lashes.

But when light shone on them- it was just that. His mother's were pale and dulled in her many years, but like his hair, there was something enigmatic about his, a glimmer of something they couldn't understand.

Her eyes, his father’s dimples. He did begin to resent the comparison to him- the cruel joke that he would be genetically tied to that asshole forever- and maybe he got the feeling his mother’s comments about their similarities were contrived.

She said, “You look like your father more every day,” and it was forced. It was as if she were trying to reinforce to the both of them that Tommy was his son. 

Maybe he laughed like his mother because she raised him. Maybe he was acting more like his dad these days because he was bound to end up dead beat like him. Maybe it was the natural progression of being their son.

He was torn between resenting what people told him he was, what he would be, that he was a Shepherd, and what he saw in front of him telling him he was a freak of nature, an odd one out, that he was undeniably different.

Both paths leading to utter shit.

* * *

Tommy’s legs were growing long and thin and strong, and he was an oddity next to his father’s stocky form. His hair had yet to grow a natural color. He moved too quick. He tanned too quick. Did anyone else in the family have freckles?

It wasn't exactly Mary's nose, was it? And only vaguely like Frank’s chin. Tommy was too sinewy and bright at family events. His old man hair had stopped being a joke years ago, he was looking more and more like a stranger, and his relatives pretended not to see when he caught a falling plate just too fast.

When Frank was actually home and aware, his eyes twitched a little when Tommy moved swiftly across the kitchen to get something for Mary. 

Tommy had always just been a hyperactive kid. 

Frank's voice was gruffer, now, and more slurred, when he reminded Tommy. It wasn't for the safety of the glass on the edge of the table, or for Tommy’s own self from running into corners. He didn't do that, he cleared everything too efficiently. It was that much worse that way. 

_ Slow down, for God's sake. You can't be doing that shit all the time. Get yourself together before someone else sees you. _

Mary would snap at him when she found him awake in the wee hours on a school night. It was just another thing that wasn't right with him. It wasn't rebellious gaming or texting past curfew, and it wasn't exactly insomnia. It was Tommy lying in his room with twitching fingers and feet, and late night sprints through cold, dark air to the highway. 

Frank would smack the back of his head when Tommy shoveled mountains of mashed potatoes onto his plate. His mother grew wary of his appetite and sighed at cupboards empty of the ready-made meals she’d resigned to provide for him. 

His parents got sick of his quirks, and how they couldn't file them away as little coincidences, little jokes, little oddities. 

Tommy didn't look like them. Tommy had bright white hair. Tommy moved too fast. Tommy ate too much. Tommy slept too little. Tommy was growing weirder and weirder. 

_ “I'm not gonna fucking ignore my kid’s a damn mutie.” _

_ “Frank- don't say that aloud, someone might-” _

_ “What the fuck don't they already think? Where'd he get the white hair? Your side?” _

_ “He’s not trying to- we can get him to hide it-” _

_ “Everybody looks at him- looks at _ us _ like that already! If I didn't know your fucking backbone, Mary, I’d think you’d slept with fucking silver-whatever behind my fucking back.” _

_ “Frank!” _

There was a loud creak of the chair slamming back, his father’s stumble, a beer can falling over, his mother sputtering- he raced from the hallway back to his own bed. 

They wouldn't have been able to possibly catch him, anyways.

* * *

The orange tint on the screened-in back porch was far from picturesque, and the buzzing porch light’s harsh flickering in the low light made the pallid color of Tommy’s skin yellow, his bruises richer and uglier.

Frank held Tommy’s chin in place. It wasn't a forceful action, this time, but Frank hardly did anything gently. Maybe it could be seen as the firm hold a father had. 

Tommy’s mother was usually the one to remedy his wounds, but the circumstances were much different now. Frank had interest in this.

“You know getting in fights won't do no good.” 

“I know.” 

While Frank would normally be miffed that Tommy got picked on, specifically because his peculiarities, Tommy had won this fight. Tommy, scuffling on the ground behind the school, looked like any other rowdy boy in a fight. Frank couldn't help the tug on his lips thinking Tommy would end up as scrappy as he thought himself to be. 

He sloppily applied antiseptic on Tommy’s chin, his son hissing. But Mary was inside, far less pleased with Tommy’s fight. The tables turned, briefly. 

“You're gonna get a scar there, bet,” Frank said, his breath on Tommy’s face smelling more like his dinner than his drink. 

He tapped his own chin. “Got one about the same place. From a bottle a buddy threw,” Frank chuckled, “Guy was fucking hammered.” 

Tommy kept his eyes on his bruised knuckles. He liked this Frank better usually. But his stomach twisted when his dad looked at him with _ pride _ over their shared scars. They were father and son. For once, Frank offered comradery. He put a hand on Tommy's shoulder and defended him when Mary sputtered over the fight.

“Your mom ain't gonna getcha too bad over this, promise.” Tommy felt sick, and Frank was smiling at him. “She doesn't get us.” 

There wasn't an _ us _ . It was Tommy and his mom when Frank banged the front door in his exit. It was Tommy and his mom when she sated Frank when Tommy messed up. It was Tommy and his mom when he was four and still had the naivety to yell _ “leave her alone" _. 

Tommy didn't want his dad. He didn't want the damn scar on his chin. 

* * *

Mary Shepherd halfheartedly told Tommy it wasn't about him. He believed it, but only partially. He knew his dad would blow up at any little thing regardless. He knew Frank had viewed Tommy’s mother with tepid contempt. He knew if Tommy could have been marginally normal, there was enough about him Frank already detested.

Mary could no longer attempt to defend her son, now that she was solely burdened with him. The little boy she held close in locked closet doors. The boy she could deal no with no longer. 

* * *

Funnily enough, it did have to do with him being a mutant.

In elementary he was Tommy- who had weird hair and was funny and liked to play sports and ran really fast. 

He turned into Tommy- who had some anger issues and acted out in class for some cheap laughs and gave hilariously wrong answers and fidgeted all the time and shoved past everyone running the mile in gym class. 

Calling an aggressive kid with a shitty dad and dirty sneakers a freak was so much easier when he had unnaturally white hair. 

It fit. 

He got tossed around and disciplined and went from spending recess inside to serving suspensions in the library to sitting in his dad’s too-big blazer while his parents discussed legal actions with the parents of the kid he punched. 

He went to court, he went to juvie, and the more time he spent away from home, the more, he thinks, his parents realized they didn't want him there anyways. 

Tommy’s mom had the courtesy to buy him a new backpack for his first year of high school. They were done with juggling the remaining middle schools willing to teach Tommy, for now. 

It might have been okay if Tommy hadn't gone through so much shit before. If he hadn't already hardened, already had this anger festering inside for so long. 

And, if you wanted the honest to god truth- it _ was _an accident. It felt laughable to Tommy when adults were trying to convince him otherwise. Like he knew how the fuck his mutation worked, like he'd ever had the chance to go down to the shooting range with daddy and practice blowing shit up. Like he didn't get scolded for moving faster than a snail’s pace. Like he wasn't forced to spend every second of his life pretending he couldn't do those things. 

When the dust settled, he saw the face of the kid who pushed him over the edge, and he looked terrified. Tommy didn't know how to feel, if he should be proud for knocking the asshole down a peg, for getting some fucking acknowledgement for who he _ was _, or just a grim reminder of what everyone secretly hated about him. 

Suffice to say, he had fucked up.

* * *

When he heard Cassie say, _ “You guys could be twins”, _he didn't think much of it.

He hadn't seen himself in a mirror in a long time. And the reflections in metal tables showed a Tommy much bleaker than he ever remembered.

There was also the chaos of being freed by a pack of teen superheroes enlisting him with alarms blaring and debris settling. 

So, a lot of weird things were happening. Being referred to as Billy at every turn was super fucking weird, but so was everything else. He didn’t have time to think about a doppelganger when he was getting shot at by aliens. Then all of a sudden they got a crash course on the Scarlet Witch, which was promptly interrupted by more aliens. Captain fucking America calling him Billy, and then, more aliens.

But then he was in their lair and a new recruit and already fighting baddies, and for the first time in his life, Tommy felt himself break the glass wall in front of him and exert himself in a freeing way. Years upon years of itching feet and limbs tensed and needing to _ go _ finally having their needs met. 

As soon as they'd collected themselves and had a moment of rest, and perhaps the first time in Tommy’s life he was content to pause, there was the pressing issue of Tommy's arrival.

“Just- put your hand up to cover their hair. They look even more alike, it's even more obvious.” Kate said as the team analyzed the two. 

Tommy could see when he looked at himself for the first time in a long while that it was true. He looked at Billy and saw an unnerving ghost of himself. He couldn't convince himself of the batshit twin theory, but he started thinking of what twins thought. Twins who’d been twins their whole lives, who lived every day with a copy of themselves. Who saw a perfect reflection of themselves in another person. 

It was awkward. It unnerved him. He didn't want to think about his growing distance from the faces of his parents, and then this boy who looked like him, someone who looked like Tommy for the first time in his life, who had parents and relatives of his own

It was just a fact that they had the same nose, the same eyes, the same ears and chin and... voice. That got to him the most, to hear himself say things so differently. 

Billy was the farthest thing from him. Billy was a completely different person in Tommy's body. 

Then came the issue that Tommy had been busted out of juvie and was a state away from his parents. His dad couldn't be contacted at all. He was told his mother had been incredulous and angry and eventually she had given them free reign.

Tommy knew what she said, what she'd done. 

His mess, his mutation- it was out of her hair. She didn't want to deal with juvie, with the Avengers, with Tommy. 

The last time Tommy had seen Mary Shepherd was in a glance back into a courtroom, looking tired and refusing to meet his eyes. The last time he’d heard her was muffled and tinny, through a wall and a telephone, talking to Captain fucking America about getting rid of him.

They worked out some kind of emancipation, he thinks, and they realized the implications that Tommy was entirely uprooted. He crashed at the lair with no where else to go. 

* * *

The Kaplans would probably foster as many troubled super teens as possible if need be. They accepted the fact that there was something going on with Billy and Tommy when Billy took it upon himself to tell his parents about his supposed twin.

Tommy had stood awkwardly at the threshold of their brownstone and they looked at him in awe- this boy who wasn't their son but _ how _ they couldn't even begin to wonder. Of course they insisted he stay with him. They would do it for any of them, probably, but this was special- this absolutely crazy and convoluted mystery of their son’s spiritual twin. They were tied together by something, and the Kaplans wouldn't ignore it.

* * *

Tommy could tell the Kaplans felt the same discomfort around him that he felt around Billy. The face of their son on a stranger, who shrank back to the corners and shadows of the house.

More than once Billy’s brothers had mistaken him for his twin. He’d seen Rebecca’s face pause for a moment before addressing him correctly. He didn't fit in enough around there, and the peculiarities of his appearance didn't help.

And Tommy saw how Billy was _ loved _. Tommy’s role as an infiltrator gave him the perspective to watch the family as it were, and they were exactly that- a family.

It was almost sitcom-levels of sickening 30 minute episode fluff. Jeff told lame jokes while Rebecca domineered her children’s homework, Billy protested his brothers’ teasing while Teddy did his best Steve Hale impression as he raided the fridge. 

If Tommy hadn't felt like enough of an outlier for infringing upon them, this was what held him back the most. It was foreign. He’d never had the chance to live it and didn't know how to act. He couldn't insert himself into their routine, much less when it was something that completely overwhelmed him. 

Because it hurt, most of all. It hurt Tommy just to think about _ what could have been _ , much less wander into the territories of _ what should have been _ , _ what he deserved _. It hurt to see something he'd never gotten, and to know that even with the one chance he had now, he was too scared to ruin it. It hurt that Billy lived like that. And Tommy had enough guilt and self depreciation without that added onto it. 

And with that, Tommy started to think if Billy ever saw himself in his parents. Maybe Billy never had to scrutinize his appearance to try to make sense of it. He didn't think about whether or not he had Rebecca's nose. Maybe if he compared the two, Tommy could link them together through that, like he'd done with his own mother. But it seemed that Billy hadn't grown up desperately trying to reaffirm his place in his family. The twins were together now, but Billy had spent his lifetime with these people, more like him than Tommy could ever be despite their identical appearance. 

_ Had _ Billy ever questioned his position is his family? Had he looked at himself and saw a person who didn't belong? Had he felt the same numb _ wrongness _Tommy felt curl up his spine as a child? Or could it have been something as simple as an ordinary hair color preventing any doubts from surfacing? 

Did Tommy have Rebecca’s nose, this woman who had never been his mother? Did he have the same quirk in his smile as Jeff, though he had never been inside that shared joke for years? If he looked at himself, could he find the traits of these strangers? 

He felt his eyes crossing when he observed them, because they were so thoroughly _ The Kaplans _ that Tommy couldn't find where genetics began and reincarnation magic ended. 

He wasn't his parents, he wasn't Billy parents. There was only Billy, and it unsettled him.

* * *

Tommy moved around the house like he wasn't there. He went out, he returned to his pull out couch when the living room was abandoned, and it seemed like a ghost had been the only thing to nearly empty the fridge. 

Newly into this arrangement, Rebecca had looked at him, a warm smile, trying to reach out to him, and she said, “It feels wrong to have you just sleeping in the living room. If you're comfortable, do you think you’d be alright sharing a room with Billy? Or Teddy, if you think….” 

Tommy’s heart clenched as Rebecca’s words went unheard. He played it casual with his interactions with Billy, he had kept them brief, with the same jokes and playful attitude he’d adopted for all the Young Avengers. He avoided Billy, to be honest. 

Tommy knew his problems always kicked him in the ass eventually. He couldn't run away from the shithole of his life. 

Rebecca’s face was worried, and Tommy realized he had spaced out. “Um...yeah.” He muttered.

A twin bed was set up in Billy’s room, a portion of his plethora of posters moved and taken down as a courtesy, new dresser space now empty for their guest with nothing to his name. 

It was jarring, certainly, the loudness of Billy’s side, the years of history of being lived in, and the new barren addition of Tommy’s space. His phone charger was on the nightstand. He put the new clothes the Kaplans had bought him in two whole drawers. His sneakers were tossed at the end of his bed. 

Billy was looking at him, perched on his messy comforter as the house fell asleep for the night. Tommy had exited the bathroom and pulled on a tee, staring down his new bed. 

“Do you want the lamp on or…” 

“I don't care.” 

Tommy slipped under new sheets as Billy turned the lights off, followed by a rustle of him climbing into bed as well. 

“Good night.” He said. 

Tommy thought if he should respond. Begin this tradition of their rapport. 

“Yeah. Good night.”

* * *

Every day Tommy woke up looking at his own drowsy face. With their shared room, he and Billy moved around each other more. Billy initiated conversations. He stopped Tommy in the kitchen to tell him Rebecca would be working late. He had a smile on his face as Tommy grudgingly amused his brothers.

Despite himself, Tommy did develop a correspondence with the Kaplans. Jeff teased him lightly and Tommy grew silently fond of his humor. Rebecca tirelessly watched over his care and he couldn't help but feel indebted- feel thankful. He grew fond of Jake and Michael and found himself in a big brother role. Teddy was easy to get along with and Tommy saw a kindred spirit, a friend in him. 

He inevitably found himself tangled together with Billy. Whatever their differences, whatever their years apart as strangers, there was a definite pull in the air, a connection. He couldn't ignore him. 

* * *

“You don't- you don’t believe we could be her sons. It's like, there can't be anything else to explain us but something like that.” 

Tommy looked at Billy from across their room, the latter sprawled across his bed.

“The whole ‘my real amazing parents will come one day and explain my fucked up powers’ thing never comes true, you know.” 

Billy tensed. “I’m sorry.”

Tommy felt like an asshole comparing his misery to Billy’s. Billy had money, he didn't. Billy had great parents, he didn't. Billy had siblings, he didn't. Billy was bullied as the skinny, gay, Jewish nerd, and, well, it had been different for Tommy. 

Tommy always had to stamp down that train of thought. It led to thinking of everything he didn't have. It led to the anger that had built up over that. He hated his life, truly. Despite the absurdity of his current situation, it may have been one of the more stable and happier, even, periods of his life. And then he thought that this was because he was now basically living Billy’s life. It all circled back to wishing for things he'd never had, the anguish over how unjust that felt, and the nagging contempt that clawed inside of him. Whether he was angry at the situation itself, or whatever means had brought him there, or even...Billy himself. For having it. 

It wasn't Billy’s fault, obviously. Tommy couldn't even begin to wonder who to point fingers to about all that. It was different than envying a stranger for what they had, and, in Tommy’s mind, it was much crueler. How could he loathe or blame Billy for his own fucked up shit. He'd spent enough years blaming himself for it. It just divided them more, Tommy thought. Billy was unreachable, in ways where they could never truly understand each other. 

He’d seen the subtle ways Billy was fucked up. He shrunk back in public, his eyes darted nervously at times at the school they'd eventually sent Tommy off to. He saw the prescription bottles of Lexapro in the kitchen. Billy had vaguely explained his run ins with bullies. 

Tommy fought, Billy was kicked to the ground.

“Don't say that shit. You had nothing to do with it.”

Billy looked angry now, he looked upset. The way he did when Tommy pushed back. 

“It sounds stuck up when I think about, but do you resent me?”

In truth, he did a little. He did. It wasn't Billy, it was the circumstances; the fact that the magical reincarnation stork delivered Billy to a pretty sweet setup and dropped Tommy into a powder keg. 

“We all have our own shit.” He said instead. 

“I'm not saying that…the homophobia wasn't, still isn't, hard, do you-” 

“You're inferring a lot.”

Billy drew in his breath a bit. “Tommy?” 

“I don't want to talk about it and never have.” 

Billy looked determined, a rarely seen look on him. “Tommy.” 

His gaze slid over to Billy. His jaw tightened. Who else but his gay soul twin to talk about it with? 

“You don’t really think about it when you're little, but maybe you did. And then maybe nobody’s going to like you anyways, and you're at a new school for only a week before people realize you're trash, after your new-kid-second-base popularity wears right the fuck off. But that's just another thing, right? Fuck. I don't know if you're like that. And whatever happens at juvie, I don't even know. But I sure as hell wasn't about to try anything like _ that _ there. Yours? Great. Awesome. But I didn't need my dad to complain more about me being a mutie and a fuckin f-” 

“You don't have to-”

But they were different. 

“I do.”

* * *

At times, things regressed. 

They tiptoed around each other. Tommy still tended to move around the house in silence, swerving his way around everyone so not to be a bother, so not to easily meld himself into their lives. 

He and Billy would share their room without a word some days, Tommy darting in for his backpack and disappearing for school with a missing piece of toast as the only evidence he'd been there. Tommy didn't want to take up space, to intrude onto what was Billy’s; what had always been his even if they cleaned up a corner for Tommy to stay in. 

Billy looked up from his desk as he did his homework, and saw Tommy sitting on his bed, fidget cube in hand. 

Perks of living with a psychologist, or something.

“Sorry mom kinda grilled you on that uh...does it help? In your classes?” 

Tommy let out a breath. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe he wouldn't always feel like an imposter living what was maybe a “normal” and “good” life. 

“Yeah. It's pretty cool. Math has been fine for once. And Teddy gave me his notes, so.”

A wave of relief washed over Billy. They could do this. It could work.

* * *

Billy was a fungus, or a growth, or something. Tommy didn't resent Billy and Teddy being content with his silence when they ate lunch together. Billy inserted himself into the crevices of Tommy’s life that he would allow, though he had begun to crack more and more. The tense silence in their room broke, and they could have regular exchanges- as little as asking about laundry, mentioning something about school, reminders of dinner plans.

Billy was a bit of an insomniac, and seemed happy to talk to Tommy in the dark at midnight. Somehow it was easier to talk to him then, when he felt his brain wander in the dark, only their identical voices drifting back and forth in the room. 

They had the same laugh, apparently. Billy scrunched up his nose in a way that was familiar to Tommy. As if on some inexplicable wavelength, they started giving each other looks at the same time. 

One night Billy looked up at the mirror as the two were brushing their teeth, grinning at their identical toothpaste-covered faces. 

Tommy and Billy became a pair in the household, solidified as twins. 

Tommy still wondered about Billy’s similarities to his parents, and of Tommy’s own habits beginning to mimic them. Had they been there all along? Could he have become just like Billy?

How different were they really.

They had a family movie night, something Tommy had finally found himself comfortable to be included in, and the twins had simultaneously blurted the same comment about the movie.

“It's so freaky when you guys do that.” Teddy had said.

They laughed at the same time upon hearing that.

* * *

They were both crammed in Billy's bed. 

“I've been thinking about her a lot.” 

Tommy hummed. It had become less of a sore subject.

“I think about- these dreams, like I remember what it was like to be with her. I don't know if it's just my imagination. But I- I used to have these dreams too, that...they were of you. And that ended up being true, didn't it?” 

Tommy swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn't fully convince himself to believe it, to hang on to a hope he felt would be dashed. But he thought, he did want it to be true.

“I've been looking at pictures of her,” he admitted, “And I… I guess I just look at her trying to see if she could look like my mother. I always felt like I didn't look like my parents, and I start thinking we have the same eyes, and maybe my cheekbones are from her…” he found Billy looking at him intently. 

“I felt so weird about those dreams but, my powers came so late so it was always this fanboy fantasy for me and… you felt different, didn't you? Shit, you must have been… I know you don't like ‘sorry’s but… I wish I had been there with you, Tommy.” 

“Yeah.” Tommy croaked, his eyes trained on the stars spotting the ceiling as Billy gave him a half hug. His words were muffled in Tommy’s shirt. 

“It's never going to happen again.”

* * *

His heart swelled when he saw the Scarlet Witch for the first time. 

Seeing Magneto had been a tipping point to convince him of this whole thing, and Tommy had already found himself comfortable with the man, one of the most dangerous mutants on Earth, and someone he felt would give him $10 on his birthday, somehow. 

Being face to face with Quicksilver-Pietro-had been even more uncanny, and for a second Tommy wondered if that was what he’d looked like when he got older. How his baby fat would disappear and what lines would be carved into him. It was a much more pleasant future than he imagined comparing himself to Frank. 

And that was a frightening thought- another paternal figure in his life. Jeff taught him what a present father was like, and hell, Tommy had even looked up to Wolverine for a quick minute.

The brooding bad boys- or whatever Tommy liked to tell himself. He felt uneasy, frightened even, when he looked at Pietro, truly wondering if they _ were _ that alike, if Tommy would be like him. It frightened him, but not in the way his supposed fate with Frank had. This time, it was real, and Tommy was facing the more and more undeniable fact that he’d found what he had always truly been tied to. 

Flashes of memories of needing them, knowing them.

And then there was Wanda. 

Tommy couldn't say a word when he saw her. His heart was leaping out of his chest, his throat constricted. He’d told himself over and over that Billy’s theory was far-fetched, that this was Billy’s quest, that he didn't care about what might be true. 

But she was his mother. She was his _ mother _\- and every single moment of Mary brushing Tommy’s hair back, of holding him to her stomach with the reek of alcohol around them, of meek defenses of him and the “I love you”s that grew more and more tired, none of it was enough. 

He knew her, he loved her. He thought he could remember her embrace, her warmth. She didn't remember him, and Tommy wondered if she felt like he had once. If she was struck by the appearance of this supposed stranger, if she _ knew _him. 

Even the Doombot had stricken him with brief panic.

Then the Scarlet Witch returned- the woman who came home all in red to kiss her babies good night. The woman who murmured foreign lullabies in the sweetest voice Tommy would ever hear. The woman whose sheer agony and anger he’d felt in a time he couldn't remember, in a time he didn't exist.

He knew her face. He’d seen it on TV and magazine covers for years, but she was real now, in front of him. The living, breathing flesh with a heart he knew and eyes that were his own. 

That was what his mother looked like. He and Billy were born from her and her magic, his face quite literally her creation. She was the answer.

She embraced him, and he knew what it was like, the aching he’d long since repressed finally sated. 

He clung to her like a child, and he felt like one, in the moment. Like a four year old lost in a park when the world was foreign and vast, and the sight of his mother was a beacon he would rush to in relief. He would cling to her in his promise to never find himself lost again. 

He couldn't tell if the smile on her face was familiar because what was once his past, or because he'd seen it in the mirror all his present life. 

He knew he would never lose her again.

* * *

It hadn't been a good day for anyone. After all the battles, the close calls, the tragedies and reunions, they had to return home in a daze, shuck their ruined suits off, mumble brief, bad news to concerned parents.

It hadn't been a good day.

There wasn't anything to say, and they didn't say it. They had stuck to each other for a while, the comfort of company still there, the desperation to hold on tight to them. And eventually, as it had always been, Billy and Teddy had closed off into each other. 

It was fine by Tommy, who maybe needed the time alone. It was a paradox, because he didn't truly want to be alone in that moment, less so than any other time in his life. They had been all each other had, pressed into each other with unspoken grievances, unspoken promises, unspoken affirmations of their loyalty. 

But Tommy had been alone all his life. As much as the comfort meant to him, the fear of letting go of them right then for even second paralyzing him, he had to think. He wasn't good at confronting his feelings, of recognizing change. He always kept moving. 

But it was different, wasn’t it? This was a situation he had never thought he'd be in. He sat alone in his room, looking at his corner’s barren walls. He was attached. He felt loss. He needed them. 

In his room, he was the only person in the world. They all reluctantly separated to their homes, and this was Tommy’s space, Tommy’s time. Things had changed. 

It struck him, and he accepted he would be inside his own head for a while, revert to his closed off self. 

At night, Billy reappeared at his door, though not to stay. It had hit him too, apparent in the tiredness of his face. He wouldn't be okay for a long time. Tommy wouldn't know how to deal with it, and it would scare him, and he would long for the thing they had slowly built. 

But for the moment, Billy managed a small, sad smile, saying, “Good night, Tommy.” 

He turned to leave the room, and paused, looking back, that rare look of intent on his face. 

“I love you, Tommy.” 

Tommy couldn't say it, but he now knew he felt the same

* * *

Tommy had progressed with the Kaplans, and managed to somewhat accept himself into their lifestyle. Billy had been his in, and with that bridge closed for construction and leaving Tommy alienated and alone in ways he never thought he'd be, he found himself in their family as Tommy-purely, utterly himself, with whatever relationships he had with them devoid of Billy. 

(And that was a scary thought, that his lifeline to this family was non-functioning in his mind. He was frustrated like he'd never been before, and angry at himself for taking down his walls and then getting roadblocked. Billy had been the first person Tommy had ever had any true connection to in a lifetime of alienation. He'd been the foundation of everything good in Tommy’s life, and in finding his true family, in whatever way that meant. And after taking the risk of getting past his own issues and _ trying _, Billy’s own issues arose. And Tommy was frustrated with circumstances once again, because nothing good in his life stayed, none of it was real. There was no one thing to blame, and that left the guilt unfairly on Billy, or back onto Tommy himself.) 

Astonishingly enough though, the Kaplans still didn’t seem to mind him. 

But still, his stomach leapt when he looked at the shoebox Rebecca had handed him.

She said, “You must run through these pretty quickly, right?” 

He swallowed as he thought of his dirty sneakers as a kid. The beat up, Good Will shoes his parents surrendered to buy only when it couldn't be avoided. Dirty and falling apart and with soles impossibly worn. He would grit his teeth when he looked at them. It wasn't bad enough that he knew the looks people would give him. The obvious thoughts they’d have. Because part of it was just another thing Tommy couldn't control. And his already second hand sneakers would get a beating that would make people raise eyebrows more and that would make his parents angrier.

He would ruin these nice shoes. His current ones weren't so bad, in comparison to all he’d had. He didn't need these, and he still found it difficult to accept something like that. Something he knew was more trouble than it was worth. An accommodation to parts of him that he knew from his parents were no pleasure to deal with. 

Here the Kaplans were, earnestly telling him that they didn't see it that way. 

Rebecca pushed the box towards him. It was not his mother’s face, the one he’d found after so long. His “true” mother, who he’d yearned for all his life. Or a biological one, who after all this time he still could not say didn't have a place in his heart. Rebecca was not tied to Tommy in either of those ways. She was someone else’s mother, but she was motherly. Tommy didn't know who she was to him. 

But she felt every bit maternal when he hugged her for the first time.

* * *

He was dreaming.

His face melted into Billy’s, and he wondered what really changed. He thought about the scar on his chin. It moved to their mother, and the tightness in his chest returned, as always. He was asleep, but his throat burned. And then it was Pietro, and he focused more on the similarities between the twins than Pietro and himself.

The Vision- Tommy had never thought about the Vision’s face. He looked like a man, but what kind of man, what kind of features. Red morphed into a fleshier pink, and maybe there was an alarming familiarity there.

His mother, his father- Tommy couldn't even remember their faces as well anymore, much less what he saw in them. He wanted his father’s face to shift more and more into a stranger’s. 

He didn't think about the Kaplans anymore. 

He was looking at everyone, more and more people, and they were just unrelated features melded, but a nose is a nose and lips look like lips-and he didn't see Teddy, at least he couldn't tell, but he started to wonder. 

Maybe he would know. Maybe he could tell, when he shifts, or just when he looks at people. How deep the differences go. How alike two features may be. He couldn't ask. He didn't even know if he'd learn anything. He'd skim a book on genetics, if the circumstances of his birth didn't throw science out the window.

The faces were all blended, and he couldn't tell who was there anymore. 

But he woke up shaking and sweating, and for the nth time felt shame twist his stomach when he heard Billy’s comforter rustle. Probably his worst trait as a roommate. 

He trained his eyes on the hazy shapes of the posters across the room as Billy sat on the edge of his bed. 

“Tommy?”

He didn't want to see another face then. He especially didn't want to see his _ own _ face, and Billy’s was included in that sentiment. 

It was dark, sleep still in his eyes, and Billy was a black and white shadow as Tommy side eyed him.

“You have a new zit on your forehead.” He said

* * *

When he felt lost with Billy, he turned to Wanda.

Looking at her surprised face when she answered the door still churned his stomach. They hadn't talked much since that day. Tommy couldn't lie and say he wasn't overwhelmed by it all. And, to a point, deep, deep in his subconscious, it nearly felt like a betrayal to his new relationship with Rebecca.

But he needed this and wanted it. And he knew for damn sure he wouldn't pass it up.

The nervousness inched away slowly. 

Wanda looked at Tommy with hesitant fondness. Like he would disappear again in a second. She was hopeful, grateful, and apprehensive.

Maybe they both tensed when she touched Tommy’s shoulder. She wanted to hold her son again, and pray he wouldn't shy away. He wanted to return to the arms of his mother, and relax the walls around him. 

He studied her intensely, still obsessed with his origin. He wondered if she compared him to his past self as well. 

Ultimately, Tommy was not the past. He got to know this Wanda, she got to know the present Tommy. 

Tommy loved her laugh because it came after his lame attempts at jokes. He loved her smile because it was always present at their breakfasts on her balcony. He loved the way she cupped his face, because she bid him farewell with the same message of “stay safe, liebling”.

Wanda told him about Pietro, her grin wide when Tommy identified with his speedster incidents. He told her about Billy. They were both tense as he did. 

Tommy held his mother’s hand, wishing he could give her all the love she lacked. Wanda cupped his face, his own pain not lost on her.

“He won't be gone forever. I can wait for him to come to me. But you, liebling- I know he loves you. You should not worry about that.” 

“Did you ever... feel like you lost Uncle Pete?”

Her eyes were forlorn and far away for a moment, years upon years sinking into them, with a deep, regretful understanding. “Many times. So much has happened to us...but he has been all I've had so many other times. I know he's felt the same about me. And I can imagine Billy has felt the same about you.” 

Tommy felt the guilt of brushing Billy off for so long once again. 

“We always return to those we love. No matter how long it takes or impossible it seems. I know for certain every time I see the two of you again. You will always come together in the end.”

“I hate waiting,” Tommy murmured, “But I've had to wait for him my whole life.”

* * *

In the end, Billy did come around. Pietro would come by occasionally, with a few unexpected visits from Lorna and Luna.

Tommy eased himself into his family, and into the idea that he could have them as well as the Kaplans, and everyone else who came to be family to him- Kate, Teddy, Eli...Cassie.

It came with his time with Wanda and Billy, and the faint nostalgia and deja vu still lingering in his brain, but also the new relationships he'd formed with them. With Billy’s eventual arrival began their long process of catching up with each other. 

It came with his friendship with Kate being more than just getting something from each other. With the realization that that was all anyone ever seemed to want from them- to get something. Then they laughed, realizing they'd both done that very thing (but everything was give in take, they'd have to unlearn). That opened up real communication, with real selves, with dealing with their own bullshit that wasn't so different.

It came with Eli, and the moments Tommy would allow brief grief, when they would shed their fronts of opposing stubbornness to reach out because they cared, really. 

It came with Teddy, and their silent acknowledgements. The watchful eye on Billy, even if only one could really admit it. And the even more unspoken comradery in loss, in confusion, in alienation.

(There was a lot Tommy could say about Cassie, but he wasn't ready yet)

It came with Pietro and Lorna and Luna and even Erik, and the tomes of family history that came with them all. The years that'd long passed and the people he'd never meet, but were entangled in what seemed to be an ever-expanding web of ever-extending family.

It came with the Kaplans, who chose him. And then lever let go.

It felt overwhelming at times. He'd begun his life stuck in what he felt was an inescapable situation, fighting weak concepts of nature vs nurture. He’d searched for something old, had ended up with something new, and then, finally, saw a broader picture. 

He'd found his family quite literally, but also in the people along the way, when he chose them. He wanted to be with these people he cared about, and they wanted to be with him too. There were no biological or magical ties- no innate destiny to it or genetic eventuality. It was Tommy, simply, and his ability to be loved. To be loved. 

* * *

Tommy loved his mother. He loved her eyes, and the way they sparkled, and the way she said his did the same. 

Tommy loved his brother. He loved his ridiculous bedhead, and the way he got annoyed by Tommy’s teasing, and the way he pointed out Tommy had the exact same problem.

Tommy loved when his mother laughed when he copied expressions from old pictures of her brother. 

Tommy loved his family’s laughter when he and his aunt gave matching stink-eyes.

Tommy loved the same crooked smiles (though one was missing a front tooth) that flashed on selfies of him and his cousin. 

Tommy loved when something he did reminded his grandfather of something, and he would begin to tell family tales Tommy was still learning. 

Tommy loved the uproar that went through the room when he attempted to give Billy a wet willy.

“_ Eugh! Tommy! _ That’s _ disgusting-” _

“Oh! Pietro, you did the same thing when-”

“Oh, yeah, Luna, listen to what your dad used to-”

“Now, you weren't the most virtuous child yourself Lorna-”

“See, I was _ not _ the worst one-”

And so forth. 

(He loved it)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in March/April.... and then I finally finished it. Big thanks to the marvel discord for giving me the inspo to finish and publish this. 
> 
> tumblr is gwystyl ;^)


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